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Aug 9, 2019 at 7:08 PMAug 9, 2019 at 8:08 PM

The inflammatory comments Wednesday came in the context of raising money for future elections. But the office of Gov. Mike DeWine took them seriously enough to refer the matter to the State Highway Patrol, whose executive detail protects the governor.

The outspoken leader of an Ohio gun-rights group threatened politicians seeking to restrict access to firearms that "there will be political bodies laying all over the ground ... we gun owners will pull the trigger, and leave the corpse for the buzzards."

As he said the latter in a video, Ohio Gun Owners leader Chris Dorr pointed and made several shooting motions.

Dorr's inflammatory comments, made about 65 minutes into an 80-minute Facebook screed on Wednesday, came in the context of raising money for future elections. But the office of Gov. Mike DeWine took them seriously enough to refer the matter to the State Highway Patrol, whose executive detail protects the governor.

Staff Lt. Craig Cvetan, a spokesman for the patrol, said investigators are reviewing the matter but have not opened a criminal investigation.

DeWine himself has not seen Dorr's message, spokesman Dan Tierney said. "If there is anything of a questionable nature, we generally make the proper authorities aware of it," he said.

Dorr could not be reached for further comment.

He expressed outrage during the video that another gun-rights group, the Buckeye Firearms Association, had been invited by the governor's office to review a proposal unveiled this week for "red flag" legislation. Two days after a Dayton shooting took 10 lives, including that of the shooter, DeWine proposed a law that would allow a judge to order the confiscation of weapons from a person deemed a danger to himself or others — but not until after a court hearing.

"These are the enemies of the Second Amendment ... the people who are trying to destroy this country," Dorr says as he shows Buckeye members filing into DeWine's news conference Tuesday, to which Dorr was not invited. He called his video "Details of the DeWine Agenda, the BFA-Betrayal Completes, and a state on fire."

Dorr leveled insults at numerous public officials. He called Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley "a horrible human being." Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, who helped bring the Buckeye Firearms group to the table, was dubbed a “dumb doofus” and a “schmuck.” Referring to DeWine, Dorr said: "This jerk is our governor." And public officials who oppose his agenda are "these thugs and these miscreants."

He said that if he had been allowed into the news conference, he would have gotten in the face of DeWine, Husted and others to warn that they "will face wrath of gun owners ... The Ohio Gun Owners army is getting big, it’s getting huge.”

Dorr emphasized that his group would not cut a deal on Second Amendment rights.

“We never sit down at the table to compromise. We do sit down at the table and tell them, ‘You can do this, or there will be political bodies laying all over the ground in — maybe not this election, maybe the next election, maybe the next election.

"But you’ll get yourself added to a list that, my friend, at some point when you come across a target field, we gun owners will pull the trigger, and leave the corpse for the buzzards.’ That’s our version of negotiation with these people. …

“And we’re going to be working hard in this election. And if we can’t make 'em pay that price we’re looking for in this one, we’ll get 'em at the next one, or we’ll get 'em the next one. That’s the choke point for these politicians. They know that. They know that we know that.

“So we leverage that in the legislative process to try to steer legislation, or get votes, or get 'no' votes. That’s what this organization is about.”

Other gun-rights supporters have quietly questioned how many Ohioans are represented by Dorr, who is active in other states as well. But he clearly has influence.

Earlier this year, he caused House Speaker Larry Householder to send a bill to a different committee. That came after Dorr's group said that a requirement for gun dealers to pass out a pamphlet outlining Ohio laws on citizens' duty to retreat from a dangerous situation “can get gun owners killed.”

Last year, Dorr spoke at a Statehouse gun-rights rally in which then-Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor wielded a shotgun and signed a pledge never to infringe on the right to bear arms.

Dorr did have praise for one public official in his Facebook video: state Rep. Candice Keller, a Middletown Republican who blamed the Dayton shooting on same-sex marriage, marijuana, "snowflake" opponents of President Donald Trump, drag queens and violent videos, among other things.

He called her “a wonderful woman.”

Dispatch Reporter Randy Ludlow contributed to this story.

drowland@dispatch.com

@darreldrowland

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